`The Relic' Cleverly Recycles Bits Of Classic Horror Films

January 11, 1997|By MALCOLM JOHNSON; Courant Film Critic

Film review

THE RELIC, dDirected by Peter Hyams; written by Amy Jones, John Raffo , Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, based on the novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child; director of photography, Hyams; music composed by John Debney ; production designer, Philip Harrison; edited by Steven Kemper; creature effects by Stan Winston; produced by Sam Mercer and Gale Anne Hurd. A Paramount Pictures release, playing at Showcase Cinemas, East Hartford, East Windsor and Berlin, and the Bloomfield Cinemas. Running time: 110 minutes.

Dr. Margo Green Penelope Ann Miller

Greg Lee Chi Muoi Lo

Lt. Vincent D'Agosta Tom Sizemore

The Mayor Robert Lesser

Dr. Ann Cuthbert Linda Hunt

Dr. Albert Frock James Whitmore

** 1/2

**** Excellent; *** Very Good; ** Good; * Fair; # Poor

Near the start of ``The Relic,'' a couple of kids get lost at night in a huge Chicago natural-history museum. The film never shows how they escape, though they are mentioned in passing. Later, Peter Hyams' murky, violent shocker exhibits an ever bigger narrative gap, when the star, Penelope Anne Miller, disappears for the longest time.

Yet, despite what seem to be missing pieces, this long-delayed horror saga churns along compellingly as it cleverly recycles bits of ``Dracula,'' ``The Phantom of the Opera,'' ``Alien'' and ``Mystery of the Wax Museum,'' as well as less respectable genre items such as ``The Brain Eaters'' and ``Brainiac.''

From the Bram Stoker classic, ``The Relic'' borrows the idea of a nefarious shipment that creates a death ship. The phantom killer that begins to rip apart museum employees turns out to resemble an alien, and Hyams makes spooky use of the mounted animals and magical artifacts in the night world of the huge institution, as in ``Mystery'' and its more famous remake, ``The House of Wax.'' And, as it develops, the Thing stays alive by feeding on the brain's hypothalamus.

Based on a novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, ``The Relic'' shrewdly pits science against superstition. In this case, the myths emerge from the jungles of South America. At the dark heart of the tale is the Kothoga, an Indian devil god. Dr. Albert Frock, the old museum hand played with wisdom and whimsy by James Whitmore, believes in the Kothoga legend and also has posited the theory that bizarre mutants sometimes emerge to ravage primitive societies. Miller's Dr. Margo Green, a no-nonsense evolutionary biologist, will have none of this, though she holds dear Frock in high regard.

Amusingly enough, the museum is showcasing a show called ``Superstition'' as the bodies begin to pile up -- first on a mysterious cargo ship in Lake Michigan, then in the great hall. Another neat touch is a superstitious detective, Lt. Vincent D'Agosta, acted with authentic toughness and a touch of wariness by Tom Sizemore. The guy orders a subordinate not to step over a body because of his odd fears of jinxes and carries a charmed bullet as a talisman.

As fate would have it, the murders occur just as the museum is planning a gala honoring two local philanthropists. Both Green, a hot DNA experimenter, and a lickspittle rival, Chi Muoi Lo's pig-faced Greg Lee, are battling to win a grant from the filthy rich couple, which provides moments of comedy, some of it verbal, some of it gruesome.

Hyams, the cinematographer as well as the director, works largely in semi-darkness. Green becomes spooked at one point in a museum hall full of glowing treasures born of ancient superstitions, entered through a huge facsimile of a pre- Colombian head. Much of the action takes place in dim basements or in long, wet, hellish subterranean passages leading to the lake.

As in ``Alien,'' these make ideal hiding places for a monster. Hyams wisely follows Ridley Scott's lead in first showing only flashes of the creature: a glimpse of a huge, scaly, saurian leg, a swirl of a dragon tail in the half light.

In the end, of course, ``The Relic'' -- which takes its name from a rock sculpture of the Kothoga, painstakingly restored in yet another incomplete vignette -- erupts into a monster mash. Hyams has filmed it excitingly, and Stan Winston delivers a blazing special effect. But there is a bit too much of Godzilla in the monster when it finally is revealed in all of its ghastly glory.

Along the way, Hyams presents a telling view of the inner workings of a great museum, with Linda Hunt as a perfect director, and the relationships of such an institution to City Hall, with Robert Lesser as a bullying mayor. Mordantly, the director and his writers also set out a scathing vision of partying socialites, pushing and shoving and nearly killing one another in their frenzy to escape a grand fete that has turned into a horrific nightmare -- in which they have become the hors d'oeuvres.